Thursday, March 13, 2014

Let me share this article today in which the error we faced didn’t resemble with the farm configuration. We are using windows authentication and neva-eva configure the claims authentication but today we faced this strange error:

An error has occurred in the claim providers configured from this site collection.

I was working on permission part for one of the service application in Central Administration (CA), trying to give permission to one of our service account but got the above mentioned error.

It didn’t take me to figure out what’s the issue and the resolution was pretty simple

Resolution:

AAM i.e. alternate access mappings – Please make sure that you have configured the CA URL properly. In case of any changes with respect to host header then please do the necessary changes and check the results.

Recently we have created Business Connectivity Service application (BCS SA / BDC) and we were having problems in accessing the SA. We were getting the following error message while accessing it – if we click on the BDC / BCS service application then it was throwing an error message.

Error Message:

There are no addresses available for this application

Notes:

This is not a permission issue.

There is no problem of service application corruption.

This is not user specific / account specific.

Resolution:

1)Make sure the service is started via – services on server.

oCentral administration

oApplication management

oService applications

oManage services on server

oStart the ‘Business Data Connectivity Service’

2)Execute IISRESET on that server where you have started the Business Data Connectivity Service.

By default only one content type is a part of any document library i.e. New Document – How to check this?

1)Open your SharePoint document library

2)Click on new

3)You will see the content type named as “New Document”

Now I want another content type listed over there as “Link to a Document” – How to enable this?

a)Open your SharePoint document library

b)Top section ->Ribbon

c)Library

d)Library settings

e)Advanced settings

f)Enable this option – ‘Allow management of content types’

g)Click OK

h)You will again come back to the library settings page

i)Scroll down to the same page

j)There you go - you will see a new section named as “content types”

k)Click this options – “Add from existing site content types”

l)You will see several content types under “Available site content types” gallery

m)Scroll down to the list and select “Link to a document”

n)Click Add

o)Hit OK

By this way, we have successfully added the “Link to a document” content type (CT).

Now how to use this content type?

1.Open your document library where we have enabled this content type

2.Top Ribbon ->Library Tools

3.New Document

4.Select ‘Link to a document’

5.You will see two fields Document Name and Document URL

6.Enter the name as per your requirements and enter the document URL (How to get document URL? – Go to the document library where the document resides ->Right on that document for which you want to create a link ->Copy shortcut)

By this way – a link to document will be successfully created!

Now the times arrive to discuss issues w.r.t. this functionality.

Why the document which has been created by “Link to a document” content type opens only in “Read only” mode?

Not understanding the exact behavior – let’s try to reproduce it J

Let us create one hyperlink / link to a document in my document library – here is the screenshot

Click on it and you will get these options – Open, Save and Cancel.

Where is the edit option?

If you click on open ->document will open without any problems ->but if do any changes and try to save it then it will ask you to save locally

Is this I want? NO – I want that this document should be saved directly to SP and not locally!

Let’s try to understand this / check what is under the hood – How is this functionality working?

When we use the content type “Link to a document” then it will not be an office compatible component that we can use with word, excel or PowerPoint. It is simply an aspx page and it’s not possible to edit these pages in office version.

I have created a document share for this document library where I placed the “linked to document” content type.

Default visibility will show you that it’s an excel compatible as we have linked the excel document to it.

But if you create a network share for the same document library then it will reveal the real facts, like above.

From the screenshot, you will understand that it’s showing as aspx page and not an office document. ASPX page are not office compatible so it’s quite obvious it will give you the prompt of open, save and cancel.